Silent Hill
Does anyone actually expect the new Need for Speed movie to be good? Even without knowing anything about the project, it’s safe to assume this film, an adaptation of a racing video game, will be lame at best.
Video game adaptations are always bad. And they’re always bad in sadly predictable ways. There are two types of bad video game movies: Movies that blindly follow the original game and movies that completely ignore the source in service of a generic genre riff.
Movies in the former category are particularly disheartened. There’s palpable enthusiasm behind these films, but they stick so closely to the game that they lose sight of the bigger picture.
It doesn’t matter, for instance, that the costumes in DOA: Dead or Alive are a pretty good match for the in-game costumes when the rest of the movie is banally awful. Even though the aesthetic of Silent Hill successfully evokes the moody images of the games, the broader film simply doesn’t work. And the less said about the first person sequences from Doom, the better.
These filmmakers mistake reverence for genuine accomplishment. These movies recreate, often quite faithfully, moments or experiences within their source material without recognizing the importance of the interactive element. Silent Hill isn’t profoundly affecting just because of the art style, but also because of the moody atmosphere and tension created by the clunky controls. Recreating the plot of Doom, first-person gimmick or not, without the charm of the awkward 2.5D controls or the terrible flashlight-fueled gameplay of Doom 3 is like buying concert tickets for a deaf man.
The cruel irony is that in trying to celebrate the original work, these filmmakers only end up diminishing it. Divorced from the interactive element, these adaptations frequently serve only to point out the inherent flaws that the original game could mitigate with stellar game design or some other inherent function of the medium.
The other case, when a video game adaptation becomes something totally generic, is far easier to explain. Few filmmakers of talent are interested in making a generic film. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Max Payne and this week’s Need for Speed are the most notable recent examples, and each of these films seemingly exist to counter some established franchise with the faintest bit of video game name recognition.
It’s obvious why Need for Speed’s blatant rip-off of the Fast & Furious franchise is going to suck: The movie is a trashy carbon copy of a popular film franchise. Few talented people in Hollywood respect or adore video games enough to enable a legitimate attempt at a video game adaptation.
Until that day comes, it’s best to go into any video game adaptation with rock-bottom expectations.
